Here, Have Some Drone

Not drone music, necessarily, but drone itself. Sound without melody, without rhyme, barely rhythm. The note uncivilized. Used by artists laboring within the framework of song as memento mori. Backdrop to menacing rap lyrics as an additional indicator of nihilism. The blurry rumble when you’ve OD’d on chop & screw. Some incarnation of it operating in the monotone repetitions and “ambient” sounds of Lil B.  (Thank you based god.)

If you have the system for it, the rumble in your bones. If you don’t have the system for it, the familiarity of sound blown out beyond audible: the aural equivalent of an overexposed photo. Paralleled visually in the music videos accompanying songs featuring drone: stark blacks and whites, television noise.

Something in between the guitar-drone of shoegaze and the low-end vibrations of house and dubstep bass. Lulling and monotonous like the former, but colder, more industrial, digitized.  Monophony with glitches. This drone, like its ancient predecessors, represents nothingness, but no longer a transcendental nothingness. A manmade, urban emptiness. The static left when everything else falls away, evocative of apocalypse and decay. Assuming you believe the tree makes no noise when it falls in the forest if there is no human left to hear it, drone is the last sound on earth.

Watch & listen to the full playlist created for this post on Hydra’s Youtube channel: